Notes: I read something somewhere with a line that really struck me, and I subsequently wrote an entire piece that revolves around this one line. I can only hope that the line and the premise of this piece have as much power here as it did where I read it originally. I hope you enjoy this piece.

Characters: Lance. Clair, Yellow.

Universe: Manga

Warnings: violence, spoilers.

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon. All mistakes are my own.

puppet

i.

You still remember your first taste of it; the first time you gave yourself over to a will that wasn't your own. The voices helped remake you, stripping away all the weaknesses within you and leaving you with a duty and powers beyond your imagination.

But you had tasted it before, though always in fear or anger but never intentionally. Cornered by poachers, your mother's lifeblood draining onto the Forest's floor for the pokémon she had tried to keep from their greedy clutches, and a fear unlike anything you had ever felt before rising up within you, closing your throat and preventing you from screaming for your life. It came to you then. When one of the poachers pulled the knife back to take your life just like he had your mother's and you opened your mouth to scream, it was not your voice that left you, but another's.

The poachers' pokémon, a ruthless-looking charmeleon, suddenly turned against them, breathing flame, and it was as if you were the one burning them with your fire, punishing them for their greed. They screamed and ran and your child's hands reached out after them, and you felt the Forest respond, awaken under your command in righteous fury, but something pulled you back, and you let them get away, falling to your knees beside your mother's corpse.

In the Forest of ancient power, you had heard the voices speaking to you, speaking through you, but your grief had muted the voices and filled your ears with the sound of your own sobs as you buried your face in the crook of your mother's pale neck until her body became cold.

But it had gained entry to your mind once, and that small taste of power would remain half-remembered in the back of your mind.

ii.

You must have stayed by her side for days before you were found, mute and covered in dried blood, accompanied by the poachers' charmeleon, whose eyes glowed a faint viridian.

They took you away from the Forest and your mother's body, first to Viridian City to be examined and have your next-of-kin contacted, and later across the mountain range and to the west, to the land of your ancestors. The charmeleon would not leave your side, and you clutched the sphere holding the pokémon your mother had died to protect in your hand, never letting anyone see that you had it. Somehow, you understood that when faced with such untainted purity, humans would do anything to claim and sully it.

When you arrived at Blackthorn City, your mother's father, hard-faced and stern, put his hand on your shoulder and squeezed. Your mother was the second of his children that had died before he did, and thus you were the second orphan he had taken in.

Her name is Clair, and she is your cousin, your mother's father said, and you stared at the small girl with the blue hair and sharp eyes, and something within you whispered of blood and the ties that bind, so you clasped her hand when she offered it to you and swore that no more of your family's blood wouldl be spilled, your other hand still buried in your pocket, holding your mother's poké ball tightly.

iii.

You were too young to fully understand what your family was tasked with when your mother was still alive, so it is your grandfather who explains things to you. Your family has always been tasked with protecting dragon types from harm, and once you hear this, you understand why it was that your mother chose death over allowing the poachers to take her dratini. This realization cleansed some of the festering wounds they had been inflicted upon your heart, and for a time, you are at peace.

With your grandfather and cousin, you learn how to articulate the feelings that have existed as a strong undertow within your psyche since that day in the Forest. Pokémon are meant to be protected as precious allies and friends; dragon pokémon especially, whose rarity made them precious as humans continued to destroy their habitats and pollute their environment.

You and Clair trained under your grandfather for most of your childhood into your adolescence. You care for her, perhaps more than you've cared for anyone since your mother died, and your affection is tempered by a steady rivalry as the two of you train to become dragon tamers. It comes naturally to you, and Clair is envious of your ability to understand them, to direct their energies and use them to bolster your own.

When you are fourteen, your grandfather decrees that you have passed the Dragon User's Challenge satisfactorily, and when you ask what about Clair?, he frowns and shakes his head.

A wedge is driven between the two of you on that day. Clair's envy transforms into bitterness and resentment, and no matter how much you try to talk to her and resolve things, they do not go back to the way they were. You want to tell her that you don't know why you passed the Challenge, or that there's nothing to be jealous over, because you're so, so empty inside, and she makes you think, sometimes, that maybe you aren't. But you fumble over your words, and she turns away from you.

Your talents, it seems, do not extend to other humans.

iv.

You wander for a time, battling other trainers with your ever-faithful dratini and charmeleon, sometimes taking on gym leaders and claiming their badges, adding them to your growing collection. Your wandering feels aimless, and it is, at least until you stumble upon a poaching operation in the Ilex Forest.

Undercurrents of thoughts awaken within you, then, and you clutch the rusting poké ball tightly as Charmeleon and Dratini punish them, barely needing your voiced commands to know how to deal with them.

When their pokémon lay beaten, you grab one of the poachers by the collar and find yourself demanding the details of their operation, how far back it goes. When the man laughs and denies you the information, you order Charmeleon to breathe fire onto his foot.

After minutes of this, the man divulges all, and the infection that had been festering on those wounds finally makes its way into your bloodstream, digging its terrible black claws into every cell in your body, making them strain, contract, yearn for revenge.

v.

You remember the first time you reached for it, the first time you decided for yourself. You were in over your head—the poachers had been excavating and reviving fossils for years, and you knew then, surrounded as you were with no hope of escape after having infiltrated their base, that your dratini and charmeleon were no match for the aerodactyl they had revived. You thought, then, that you would die there, but you found that your mother's fate was not one you wanted for yourself, and that you could not part with life as selflessly as she did. And with that admission, something whispered within you, reminding you of its presence in the deep recesses of your psyche, always watching. You could not fool it; it knew as well as you did that you were unwilling to sacrifice yourself for nothing.

So instead, you made a conscious decision. You plunged your hands into that power, let its presence flow through your mind, melding with your consciousness and adding its whispers to your voice. Viridian ran through your veins, made itself known in your eyes, and like so many years before in the Forest, the aerodactyl turns on its masters at your command, unleashing a hyper beam so vicious that it incinerates the poachers on contact.

When it was done, you surveyed the scene calmly, wondering if the men that had killed your mother were among the dead, stroking the ancient dragon-like pokémon's neck soothingly, its viridian-tinted eyes glowing in satisfaction.

vi.

The powers scared you at first, so for years you tried to impose your will over them. You blocked out the voices' whispers, forcing the foreign presence back. You continued to draw on its powers, though, and soon you learned that you could commune with pokémon, even heal them when they were injured. Most importantly, you found that you could impose your will over dragon types and pokémon that were dragon-like, and you understood why Charmeleon and Aerodactyl had betrayed their masters to help you in your hours of need.

Oh yes, you were afraid, but you cultivated your powers nevertheless, their allure too intoxicating to resist. Soon, you were nearly unbeatable, and your name became famous throughout the regions.

By becoming Champion, you hoped to prove to yourself that your will was your own, but only months after taking the title, you found yourself restless, so you had Dratini, now a dragonite, fly you to the Viridian Forest, where you knelt at the spot where your mother had been taken from you and wondered what was becoming of you.

The voices chose that moment to reassert themselves, whispers transformed into shouts, and your hands clasp over your ears, trying to block them out, but to no avail. They forced knowledge into your brain, forging neural connections and making you scream in agony. When the pain abated, you gazed at the Forest and understood.

Your mother's lifeblood, soaked up by the Forest, had been the price for its protection all those years ago. Despite the fact that you were, like the poachers, a human, destructive and corruptive by nature, the Forest had honored your mother's sacrifice for her pokémon and protected her son in turn. Humans, the Forest whispered, had destroyed pokémon for too long. Things were imbalanced, and balance had to be restored. Restore balance, the voices whispered, we have chosen you to carry out what must be done. The suffered screams of the land filled your brain and you curled in on yourself, screaming just as loudly.

When you returned to the Indigo Plateau the next morning, it was to hand in your resignation.

You were transformed.

vii.

Time passes and you begin to gather people that share your vision and will be willing tools to help fulfill your destiny. Agatha finds you, first through cryptic messages in your dreams and later at the Pokémon Tower, where she claims that she knows you and your hatred for humankind, and offers her services. She is the one that brings Lorelei into the fold, and later manipulates Bruno through her mind control, creating the Elite Four, the most powerful trainers of the world. You find that the name, while too grandiose for your liking, serves its purpose—the fear it inspires in others makes it that much easier to gather the information you need.

You learn of Lugia from one of the gym trainers of the Ecruteak City Gym. Agatha had captured and interrogated for the man for you, and Lorelei snatched the badge amplifier that Team Rocket had used to combine the legendary birds from the ruins of Silph Co. With it, you can summon Lugia and, with your abilities and the powers of the amplifier, could infuse the beast with enough energy to allow it to completely destroy humanity.

Your destiny draws ever closer to fruition…

viii.

You can kill anyone now, and to prove it, you destroy Vermillion City and bring judgment down upon its inhabitants, listening to the death rattle of thousands as you hover over the crater on Aerodactyl's back.

And that is when you see her. The girl has blonde hair and brown eyes, but the voices whisper into your ear like a lover, and warn you of her powers, as evidenced by the viridian tint that lingers beneath the ruddy brown of her otherwise ordinary eyes. Her existence confuses you; surely the Forest only needs one chosen one to bring balance? You turn to the voices for more answers, but they are silent, and you grit your teeth as Aerodactyl touches down a few yards away from the girl, regarding her coolly.

You test her, and when she holds her own against you, you smirk and retreat. A part of you is concerned, but the voices soothe you, remind you of your role, and soon you forget all about this girl, the other trainer blessed by the Forest.

ix.

You almost laugh when the old man turns up. How he managed to find you, or get past Agatha's all-seeing gaze to reach you, you don't know. Or perhaps even more surprising, how he managed to escape your cousin's watchful, fanatically protective eye is worth more consideration. Still, you admit to yourself that this is ironic – the man who raised you, served as a father figure where there had been none – attempting to convince you that you're walking down the wrong road. But even if you are this man's flesh and blood, he isn't your mother, and you've come too far to stop now.

That's what you think at first, but when your viridian eyes detect his true intentions in his familiar stance and the worn poké ball he clutches in his hand, you actually do laugh, your mirth echoing through the woods you were travelling when he found you.

He is still skilled at commanding his pokémon, even after all these years, and your style mirrors his, in some cases—your gestures are the same, your intonations rising and falling at the same crucial instances in the give and take of battle. You goad him as the battle goes on, describing in detail how the humans screamed when your dragons razed Vermillion, and his jaw only sets in determination when you do so. You spend too much time toying with his old and feeble dragonite with your own young one, but soon your patience runs thin and your ears shine green and his dragonite flinches at the intrusion into its mind, allowing the lightning that crackles from your Dragonite's antennae to strike the old man, causing his body to fold in on itself, muscles straining and brittle bones snapping. He is a mess when Dragonite finishes with him, blood and tears leaking from his eyes in rivulets upon the forest floor, but he offers you a brittle smile.

"I had to try," he wheezes. "I raised you, helped shape you. Surely this is my fault."

You shake your head. "This is my destiny. Your teachings had nothing to do with it."

He coughs, and scarlet dribbles out of his mouth. "She will never stop chasing you, now. Even if it means destroying everything she has been taught. She will do anything to stop you."

"Clair."

"Yes," your grandfather nods, "And then my failure will be complete. My children, all dead before their time; my grandchildren, corrupted by a lust for vengeance and my own twisted teachings. Soon there will be no one left to carry out our duty."

You smile at him. "Soon, there will be no need for people like us. When I've fulfilled my destiny, all pokémon will be free of those that would take advantage of them. I will purge the planet of the human race, save those that are deemed kind to pokémon," you make a sweeping gesture with your arm that makes your cape flow, but you don't know if this is you or the voices, now. "Your concerns are unfounded."

Your grandfather shakes his head. "Oh, Lance… I have done wrong by you."

Your hand makes a fist, and it shakes with suppressed rage. "No, grandfather. The world has."

He gazes at you with eyes brimming with regret and remorse that soon glaze over, and then he breathes his last.

x.

They won't let her be a gym leader, after that. You suppose that the death of the last of your family is enough to drive anyone mad, but you don't doubt for a moment that your grandfather's warning isn't true—she will come for you; it's only a matter of time.

The representative that the League sends to meet with you over the videophone is weak, a spineless negotiator bent on appeasement. "Former Champion," he says, voice full of fear beneath the surface as he bows, "I am honored to meet you."

He has come to capitulate, Agatha's ghostly voice whispers in your ear, almost giddy with anticipation. But you are filled with anger at the news, and feel compelled to spit on the man's face in disgust. What happened to the League Champions, so strong and confident; to the Reds and the Greens—the brash, arrogant young men that thought they had a right to the world because of the strength of their pokémon? Is there not anyone worth sparing from the purge that is to come?

You speak over his tinny voice. "We will destroy every one of your cities, exterminate every last one of your kind for what you have done to this world." you smirk at the man, and he begins to tremble spastically.

They send Pryce next. The old man, leaning on his walking stick and staring at you with frigid, flat eyes through the videophone, does not disappoint. "We will fight to the last trainer," he rasps. "You will not pass over any area without a fight. We will capture you, and we will try you, and you will be punished for every life you took."

For some reason, the thought of humankind fighting their fate makes you rest easier at night.

xi.

The night before you execute your plan is a sleepless one, as you are plagued with thoughts of your cousin. You can feel her, sometimes—your powers allow you to do that, too, it seems—and surprisingly, she is crying more often than not. It is not like the controlled fury she shows everyone else, the hard exterior she has cultivated as a war heroine, the woman who stalled the encroaching dragonite army over Mt. Silver when all hope seemed lost. When you both are on the edge of sleep, you can hear her whispering to you, begging you, "Come back to me, stop all this, come back, please."

But she is stuck on the other side of the mountain range that separates Johto from Kanto, bogged down by your army of dragons that Agatha so gleefully controls. She cannot reach you, now, and by the time she can, your mission will have been successful. You will allow her to take your life, then. After this, you cease to matter, and the thought of blood for blood as a form of justice sates the last vestiges of you that are human.

Surely all the years of deep-seeded resentment, the murder of your grandfather and the genocide you are about to commit will elicit enough fury from her that she will have to take your life. She cannot forgive you all that; no one can.

xii.

You have almost won—Lugia will be summoned in mere moments, the badge amplifier is almost fully charged. But as Aerodactyl ferries you toward your destiny, you sense her, the blonde girl, and she chases after you, up Mount Cerise, the plumes of lava jetting between the two of you.

You stare her down and realize that she is not afraid of you. The two of you are the same, you think. Both chosen by the Forest and blessed with its powers, cursed with its duty. You wonder, then, why she is here, why she opposes you when surely she has the same voices whispering into her ear, compelling her to restore the balance that your repulsive kind had so upset?

Perhaps you want to ask her this, but after minutes of intense battling, the badge amplifier finishes charging and lets out a beam of energy. Lugia appears in a whirlpool of water and lets out a blast so powerful that you fall to your knees in awe of it.

"No, stop!" the girl is screaming, but it is too late now, the badge amplifier is already filling Lugia with its energy, and your mind has made contact with its own. You will have control soon—

But she won't give up. The light of evolution, intensified by the amount of pokémon undergoing the transformation, blinds you. The white light stings your eyes, almost drowns the viridian out, and as you raise a hand to cover your eyes, you lose control of Lugia, and you let out a yell of shock, of surprise, because this wasn't supposed to happen—

"Megavolt!" the girl is shouting, and that pikachu, that defiant little rodent, is letting out a burst of electricity so powerful that Lugia is fleeing. Your pokémon cry out in pain, too, and Aerodactyl's wings are clipped, and you are falling, falling, falling.

The heat is unbearable but your mind will not stop screaming. How, how, how, how?

The amplifier breaks and the energy is released and the voices whisper that balance has been restored, and you scream that it hasn't, that you have failed, but the voices continue to whisper and you scream as you fall into the lava.

xiii.

You have never denied that you were merely a tool of destiny, but perhaps you did not comprehend how much of one you truly are—you were destined to play the role of the antagonist who dutifully sets the stage for the heroine to rush in and save the world. Instead of destruction and recreation, destiny had simply called for a revitalization, and you were the fool all along, unknowingly playing into the grand scheme of things.

But there is no Forest rushing up to meet you, no reward for the role you played. Only fire, and beneath it, darkness with its arms open wide in a hungry embrace. You let yourself fall into the endless abyss, stripped of the voices and the duty, and even though Aerodactyl regains the use of its wings in time, veering upwards just before you are incinerated, you know what your fate truly is, what awaits you for forsaking everything that used to define you.

You will fall forever.

A/N: This piece has been haunting me for a long, long while, so I'm glad to finally be able to write it. I've always found the PokéSpe version of Lance to be the most compelling; in the games he's a rather flat character. I enjoyed writing this very much, and can only hope that you enjoyed reading it half as much.

As always, my thanks go out to the readers. Thank you for taking the time to read this piece! Reviews are always appreciated!

I hope you enjoyed it.